Swiss pharma company set for major US investment

Swiss pharmaceutical group Roche has become the latest big company to make a major investment decision since the announcement of the United States government's tariffs program, after it revealed that over the next five years it will invest $50 billion in the US, where it currently employs 25,000 people, resulting in the creation of more than 12,000 new jobs.

Around 1,000 of these jobs will be within the company with the others in supporting roles, including construction.

The decision follows in the wake of another Swiss company, Novartis, saying that it would invest $23 billion in the US. Sector rivals Johnson& Johnson and Eli Lilly have also made significant recent announcements.

Roche Chief Executive Thomas Schinecker made no mention of the imminent 31 percent tariffs that the US would place on goods from Switzerland when he made the announcement, instead saying the investment "will lay the foundation for our next era of innovation and growth, benefiting patients in the US and around the world".

Existing US facilities in Kentucky, Indiana, New Jersey, and California will be expanded, with new sites working on gene therapy, cardiovascular study, and weight loss products set to be built elsewhere.

According to the BBC, in 2024 the US imported $213 billion of medicines, a figure more than two and a half times greater than it was 10 years earlier, which is one of the reasons President Donald Trump has been so keen to apply economic pressure to incentivize companies to relocate manufacturing to such a huge market.

The exact size and timing of the tariffs has not been made public, but in a speech in early April, Trump said: "We're going to be announcing very shortly a major tariff on pharmaceuticals. And when they hear that, they will leave China. They will leave other places because they have to sell — most of their product is sold here and they're going to be opening up their plants all over the place."

In other statements on the subject, Trump has previously said how "the pharmaceutical companies are going to come roaring back … they're all coming back to our country because if they don't, they got a big tax to pay", adding that "when they come into the US and they have their plant or factory here, there is no tariff ".

The move will result in Roche exporting more drugs from the US than it imports, and adds weight to concerns expressed in a multisignatory letter recently sent to the European Commission, and also the message delivered by a delegation of leading figures from the continent's pharmaceutical sector, about the increasingly difficult outlook for pharma production in Europe, and how the US is becoming a far more attractive area of investment.